October 9, 2001

not too much new here, sadly.
I haven't been particularly vocal of late, since my wrists are acting up again. That
means less typing and even less riding, which in turn makes for a boring bike journal.
Fortunately, the past few days have been good wrist days, which makes me pretty hopeful.
I've found that if I ice both arms at least once or twice a day, as well as wear the rigid
braces to sleep in and the thick rubber/velcro ones whenever I type or ride, it seems to
help. That is to say, I still have aching forearms and occassional sharp inner wrist
pain, but it cuts back on the hot burning tingling all over my hands.

Moral: adjust your damn handlebars already!

yes, well.
The plus side to my wrists feeling better is that I actually went on a ride this
afternoon! I rode in to work today thinking, "wow, what a gorgeous day, I should really
ride somewhere for lunch". A little while later, my coworker Ceej (aka She of the Silver
SVS) came in with her gear on, saying, "wow, what a gorgeous day, I should really ride
somewhere for lunch". And thus a plan was born. I was thinking somewhere relatively
local, so I was somewhat surprised when Ceej sent me email saying "Lunch? Half Moon Bay?".
I waffled for a little while -- Half Moon Bay is further than I've allowed myself to go
lately -- but then decided that for the time being, my arms were just going to be like
my asthma. It's under control, I'm doing all I can about it, and sometimes it's just going
to ache a little bit. If I freak out then and don't allow myself to actually do anything
until I feel 100% all the time, I'll be seriously limiting myself and then getting
frustrated because I'm sitting at home feeling sorry for myself.

So I agreed. We compromised on taking Highway 92, instead of the more interesting and
twisty Highway 84, though, because I didn't want to risk twisties if my arms weren't up to
the ride. I decided to try wearing my adjustable wrist braces while riding, which I
don't normally do, since they'd been helping me at work. They did seem to help a lot,
though it's sort of a pain in the ass to tighten the jacket cuff around them enough that
my glove cuff will fit over the jacket.

The ride up to Half Moon Bay was really nice, even though it was freeway riding. I forgot
that Ceej's SVS is still in break-in, and so she couldn't go above 5000rpms, but it was
actually really nice to ride more slowly than I would have anyway. Gave me a chance to
look at the scenery and take it easy. We stopped right at the intersection of Highways
280 and 92, which is at Crystal Springs Reservoir, for me to stretch my arms out and take
a couple of pictures.

As non-twisty as it is, I really like Highway 92. It's a bitch on summer weekends, when
everyone in the valley is trying to get to/from the beach, but on a weekday, it's perfect.
Not a lot of traffic at all, and the scenery is really amazing. Anything that gets me
high up a mountain and looking down at the Bay or the Pacific Ocean and lots of green
rolling hills in between is A-OK in my book, thankyouverymuch.

We ate lunch at a little cafe on Main Street in Half Moon Bay, and successfully avoided
going into any number of little kitsch shops. There was one neat-looking store by the
cafe, though, that sold really interesting looking kites and wind socks; that one might
be worth a second glance sometime. As we walked back to the bikes, we did the dorky
bike owner thing of taking a million pictures. You have to cut us some slack, though --
the two SVSs lined up next to each other look pretty darn nice.

For our trip back, Ceej suggested taking Hwy 92 to Caņada Road instead of Highway 280.
I'd never been on Caņada, so I agreed, and she took the lead. It was a really pretty
route than ran parallel to 280, along the Crystal Springs Reservoir and through horse
farms and rural-looking residential areas. If it weren't for 280 being in view, I could
have easily imagined us being in the Central Valley somewhere far away from Silicon
Valley. It was a nice route. We ended up taking Highway 84 (also known as Woodside) about
a block to Whisky Hill Road, which took us to Sand Hill Road, which in turn brought us
through 10 kinds of construction back to Palo Alto. All in all, it was about a 45-mile
round trip which took about 2.5 hours, including lunch.

It strikes me that we're incredibly lucky for numerous reasons, both to be so close to the
ocean and foothills so as to ride to them during a lunch break, and for working at a company
that allows us to do so on particularly gorgeous autumn days.

you outta be in pictures, baybee.
So last weekend was our first filming date for the girl
biker gang movie that I'm in. I don't want to give away too much (since I know y'all
will go check out your local lesbian film festivals to see it, right?), but suffice it to
say that I have An Actual Part, albeit a small one, playing a double-crossing sniveling
loser named Spike. Hee! Filming on Saturday was painful in that I had to be in SF at 7am,
but it was so much fun. Kim, Cat, and another friend Jen came with as extras, and they
actually got more screen time than I did in those particular scenes (my character storms
off in a huff fairly early on). ;) I took some pictures of the set, but since the whole
thing is still all Liz's (the director) intellectual property, I don't want to put them
on the web. It was really fun, though, working with real actresses, and real film
equipment and sound equipment, and hearing things like "roll cameras! action!" and "let's
block this scene", and everyone's favorite, "ok, that's a cut!". This weekend, we'll be
doing all of the riding scenes, which will kick ass. Speaking of kicking ass, Cat's
offered to trailer my bike up to SF in her van, so that my wrists don't crap out before
we even get there. I have the bestest friends in the whole known universe, s'true.